ClassZone.com-Novel guides. Macbeth Theme: Lust for Power Can Lead to Loss of Humanity. Summary, theme openers, cross curricular activities, research assignments from McDougal Littel.

Shakespeare Searched. This is a search engine designed to provide quick access to passages from Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets. “We cluster search results by topic, work, and character to make it easy to find exactly what you’re looking for”.

Shakespeare Online Great for all things Shakespeare. Analysis of plays and poems and a biography of his life is included.

BBC – Drama – 60 Second Shakespeare – Homepage NOTE: The page is no longer updated but is still useful. Create your own interpretation of Shakespeare in one minute – make a film or audio, take a scene or whole play – keep it classic or make it modern, it’s up to you. It also has links to other resources on Shakespeare, including newspaper articles telling shakespeare’s stories…

Folger Shakespeare Library Lesson plans, podcasts, and research for Shakespeare (with the emphasis on the 9 plays most frequently taught in schools). Folger is the home to one of the the world’s largest collection of Shakespeare materials and to major collections of other rare Renaissance books, manuscripts, and works of art, the Folger serves a wide audience of researchers, visitors, teachers, students, families, and theater- and concert-goers.

William Shakespeare in quarto: view 21 of Shakespeare’s plays online From the British Library Collection. View and compare 93 copies of digitized versions of all 21 of Shakespeare’s plays that were published in quarto before 1642. Includes timeline, scholary essays, and background information on Shakespeare’s life, theater, and other works.

Shakespeare Authorship The Shakespeare Authorship Pag. Dedicated to the proposition that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. An intriguing site with an easily accessible collection of essays on Shakespeare, his life, and why it was definitely Shakespeare that wrote Shakespeare. Reading these articles may be a great way to begin a class discussion on who Shakespeare was, and perhaps could be the stimulus for a short debate over whether or not Shakespeare did write Shakespeare.

Stratford – ShakespeareInformation on the life of Shakespeare, where he grew up and some of the basic details on his education, family and marriage. Provides links to the theatre and to some background information on Stratford.

Studies Explore Whether the Internet Makes Students Better Writers – Chronicle.com “The rise of online media has helped raise a new generation of college students who write far more, and in more-diverse forms, than their predecessors did. But the implications of the shift are hotly debated, both for the future of students’ writing and for the college curriculum. Some scholars say that this new writing is more engaged and more connected to an audience, and that colleges should encourage students to bring lessons from that writing into the classroom. Others argue that tweets and blog posts enforce bad writing habits and have little relevance to the kind of sustained, focused argument that academic work demands*

Literature-Map – The tourist map of literature Literature Map provides a web of authors you might like based on authors that you already enjoy reading. To use Literature Map just type an author’s name into the search box and webbed list of authors will be displayed. The authors’ names closest to the author whose name you entered are the authors whose work you’re most likely to enjoy.

EduPic Graphical Resource for Educators EduPic Graphical Resource is a teacher designed free image resource for use by teachers and students. All images contained within are free for use by educational professionals and the students they serve without permission. All other use is by permission only. All other rights are reserved.

BBC – raw – Home RaW is the BBC’s biggest ever campaign that aims to help adults across the UK read and write better. Offers skills for everyday life

MAKE BELIEFS COMIX! Online Educational Comic Generator for Kids of All Ages This is a very SIMPLE comic creating website. It might be quite useful for younger children and those who are struggling with written language. It may to be too bland for the more able students, compared to the many other sources available for use in the classroom. However, because it is written with children as the focus audience, the likelihood of stumbling onto inappropriate material appears nonexistent. There are a collection of characters (black and white drawings) where emotions, speaking and thought bubbles, and text can be added. One drawback is that the cartoons must be emailed or printed as there is no saving option.

Free and legal music downloads – Jamendo Jamendo is a site filled with nothing but Creative Commons licensed albums that take advantage of all the various versions of the license. Before using any of them, make sure you understand which version the album is using.

freesound :: home page There is no music at Freesound.org, just tens of thousands of various sound samples for use in sampling, all of them licensed under the Creative Commons Sampling Plus License.

The Digital Generation Project | Edutopia Keep track of the way digital learning is influencing the future of education.Today’s students are born into a media-rich, networked world of infinite possibilities. Their digital lifestyle is about more than just cool gadgets; it’s about engagement, self-directed learning, creativity, and empowerment. The Digital Generation Project tells their stories so that educators and parents can understand how kids learn, communicate, and socialize in very different ways than any previous generation.

I am a Shaun Tan fan. I have been since I saw The Rabbits, the John Marsden book he illustrated.

I love all the different styles he uses in his illustrations and I greatly enjoyed listening to him speak about his latest publication, Tales from Outer Suburbia earlier this year. This book had some wonderful short stories he had written as well as illustrated. My favourite, Alert but not alarmed, involves the storage of ballistic missiles in suburbia.

The Chesley Awards were established in 1985 as ASFA’s peer awards to recognize individual works and achievements during a given year. The Chesleys were initially called the ASFA Awards, but were later renamed to honor famed astronomical artist Chesley Bonestell after his death in 1986. The awards are presented annually at the World Science Fiction Convention(Worldcon).

Shaun has alreadybeen acknowledged on the international stage when he was named Best Artist at the World Fantasy Awards in 2001 in Montreal and in 2005 his book, The Arrival, which was a universal story about migration, told in a series of wordless images, became an international best-seller.

It is wonderful to see a really talented Australian author/illustrator acknowledged on the world stage. If you want to hear some of Shaun’s views on illustration, in March this year he gave the Colin Simpson Memorial Lecture. You can visit this site to hear his lecture and/or read the transcript. He spoke with great insight about using illustration as a narrative device and I summarised his lecture in a post earlier.

We all know that many of our students use Wikipedia,which may be developing into the world’s most extensive encyclopedias, as people continue to build on the information it contains. It does sometimes lack visual content, ie. pictures and more often videos, to assist with the written explanations. This can, at times, place a limit on its informative value.

Go to the Navify site and do a standard Wikipedia search (no log in required) by simply entering your search term, just as you would in any search. The results will be returned in a tabbed form displaying:

Wikipedia article

related images and

related videos.

The images tab offers photos added by Wikipedia (or Navify users) and those automatically discovered on Flickr. It is very new at the moment but, as more users come on board, I can see this becoming a great source for relevant and useful images.

Video tab

The videos tab works exactly the same way except that it finds related videos from YouTube.

Commenting on articles is also allowed. Navify is also supporting these comments using Disqus, so you will be able to read what people are saying about the Navify article pages.

The service is also planning on offering a music player so that users can listen to full related songs and audio content. So far I have found with my searching that Navify enhances the Wikipediaoption. It is still developing but has potential to become much greater. There seems to be no end to what tools people are thinking up to try and create better searching options. They won’t all survive and it will be the users who decide, in many cases. It is a very interesting time for those of us interested in information searching.

I have been to a number of professional development sessions lately. The subject of engaging our students is a hot topic and has been discussed in a number of educational forums. What I find is amazing, in all the workshops, conferences, etc. I attend, is how willing many of my colleagues are willing to share. Since being on-line, over the past couple of years, colleagues from all around the world have been sharing with me. When people share, offer suggestions/help and comment on your efforts/thoughts it is so affirming. If we feel like this then surely students would also enjoy this aspect of learning. This spirit of collaboration and support would also be appreciated by our students. They would be engaged if they were sharing and collaborating with more than just the teacher (and maybe their class). In fact they are when they have had opportunities to exhibit/present their ideas.

However we all know just how often in schools sharing is sharply limited for teachers, let alone students. A teacher I was working with is so keen to share and collaborate with teachers, not just in our school, but other teachers or schools. She has just started to see the potential but there is a long way to go before many others understand the power of such collaboration. I believe it will change, although I sometimes worry about how long it is taking to even get a toehold in some quarters.

I have been talking about Creative Commons licenses to students for 2 years. They “get it” but teachers are slower. It is odd because many teachers do not understand copyright and often have to be reminded that, just because you are using something in a school, you cannot simply copy things in their entirety or en masse. You would think that they would have been right onto CC but not so.

This is another video that explains the idea behind the creation of “Creative Commons“. I like this one because it is very inclusive in its outlook, not limited to subject/topic, culture, etc.

The Creative Commons video, “A Shared Culture,” makes a strong case for sharing content and empowering people to share their voices and perspectives on the global stage. I like how this video recommends that we should be thinking about building a sense of community as well as sharing content. I would love to throw out the challenge to colleagues at my school and have everyone think about at least one thing they could share, “out there in the digital world”, each term. Easy?!

educational-origami – Starter Sheets Variety of handouts on tools, these starter sheets are resources for the classroom teacher. The intention of each sheet is to introduce a tool, technology or activity that could be easily adapted for use in the classroom. Each sheet is created to a template design and should have the following features: * must be two pages * must have pictures that illustrate process and outcomes * process must be straight forward * must be simple to read and understand * must have clear benefits for the teacher in the classroom, the exemplar should be easy to adapt to a variety of classroom settings * must have an alternative – web based or application * must be linked to Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy and Sensory learning styles using VARK

iRubric: Home of free rubric tools: RCampus.com This online rubric maker has lots of premade rubrics by a variety of content areas and grade levels. While I wouldn’t use them as is, they can be a good place to start as you develop rubrics for a specific project.

Clay Shirky: How Twitter can make history | Video on TED.com Clay Shirky shows how Facebook, Twitter and TXTs help citizens in repressive regimes to report on real news, bypassing censors (however briefly) re:The news from Iran. The end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics. A good overall presentation on how web 2.0 technology is revolutionizing the media landscape

TheBrain – Mind Mapping Software, Brainstorming, GTD and Visual KM Software Mind Mapping Software. Simply type in your ideas. Drag and drop files and web pages. Any idea can be linked to anything else. Using your digital Brain is like cruising through a Web of your thinking. See new relationships. Discover connections. Go from the big picture of everything to a specific detail in seconds.

Free Audio Books: Download Great Books for Free | Open Culture Download free MP3’s of great works of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Authors include Twain, Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Nietzsche, Asimov, HG Wells, Jules Verne, etc. Also see link to free audio and video downloads of university/college lectures on many different topics

Wired Campus: Religion 101, in 140 Characters – Chronicle.com Stephen Prothero is helping world religions make their way onto Twitter this summer, one 140-character tweet at a time. The Boston University professor of religion is treating his account, sprothero, like a microcourse, posting several tweets on each of what he identifies as the eight major world religions: Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Daoism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and the Yoruba tradition, which Mr. Prothero calls the “neglected world religion” from West Africa

The Digital Generation Project | Edutopia Keep track of the way digital learning is influencing the future of education.Today’s students are born into a media-rich, networked world of infinite possibilities. Their digital lifestyle is about more than just cool gadgets; it’s about engagement, self-directed learning, creativity, and empowerment. The Digital Generation Project tells their stories so that educators and parents can understand how kids learn, communicate, and socialize in very different ways than any previous generation.

I am getting very bored with people bagging Twitter. Many of the radio commentators constantly have snide little comments but, from these comments, it is clear that they don’t really use it well or understand the tool. I have found twitter useful especially for my professional development. I don’t go out looking for thousands of followers or follow huge numbers of others. I like to follow other people who enhance my learning and development, especially in the field of education and technology. I have had some great information shared with me, advice given when I have needed help and I hope that some of my tweets have been useful to others. I also like to get a number of news broadcasts and, using Tweetdeck, have searches running of various subjects/topics. There are other tools as well.

Clay Shirky suggests that we are experiencing the ‘largest increase in expressive capability in human history’. The Internet has become increasingly social, with citizen reporting within personal networks a powerful force and we are seeing the impact of some quite revolutionary change on all levels of our society, including education. Will Richardson suggests that we all need to be our own editors as we are new receiving so much information. The comments have been interesting to read.

Have a look at these two information sources, what do you think about Twitter and the evolution/revolution in information gathering – and have you gone “Twitter green “?

While I am talking about Twitter there is also a new video (thank you Jenny Luca ) Twitter Search in Plain English by leelefever.The YouTube description:

How Twitter Search creates new opportunities for business feedback, tracking news in real time and discovering trends.